Kobo ebook | August 19, 2003

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This extensive book is divided into two parts. The first, which has eighteen chapters, deals with German POW camps as they were opened, in chronological order and to which the Bomber Command POWs were sent. Each chapter includes anecdotes and stories of the men in the camps - capture, escape, illness, and murder - and illustrates the awfulness of captivity even in German hands. Roughly one in every twenty captured airmen never returned home.

The first part also covers subjects such as how the POWs were repatriated during the war; how they returned at war's end; the RAF traitors; the war crimes; and the vital importance of the Red Cross. The style is part reference, part gripping narrative, and the book will correct many historical inaccuracies, and includes previously unpublished photographs.

The second part comprises an annotated list of ALL 10,995 RAF Bomber Command airmen who were taken prisoner, together with an extended introduction.

The two parts together are the fruit of exhaustive research and provide an important contribution to our knowledge of the war and a unique reference work not only for the serious RAF historian but for the ex-POWs themselves and their families and anyone with an interest in the RAF in general and captivity in particular.

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Rated 5 out of
5 by
Marc_Stevens from
The Bible of WW2 Bomber Command POW'sClutton-Brock's masterwork is the bible for researchers looking for information on Bomber Command's very extensive list of POW's in World War 2. Of the 125,000 aircrew who served in RAF Bomber Command (including volunteers from the Commonwealth), almost 50% were killed. That is the highest loss rate of any Allied combat unit in the war. But another 10,000 or so were lucky (?) in being taken as POWs. This work, which must have taken many, many years to compile, details the POW history of every individual one of those 10,000 airmen. Add to that the very detailed individual accounts of some of the more unusual stories, and this book becomes a "must" for anyone with a serious interest in the Allied POWs of WW2. As the author of a book about one POW escaper ('Escape, Evasion and Revenge, The True Story of a German-Jewish RAF Pilot Who Bombed Berlin and Became a POW', a biography of my father), my own gratitude to the author is without limits. Thank-you Mr Clutton-Brock!